The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) in partnership with Atal Innovation Mission – NITI Aayog has launched a Digital India AatmaNirbhar Bharat App Innovation Challenge for Indian tech entrepreneurs and startups.
The challenge will have two tracks which includes promotion of existing apps and development of new apps.
According to the government, the focus of the first track is to identify the best Indian apps that are already being used by citizens and have the potential to scale and become world class apps in their respective categories. The first track will have eight categories namely, office productivity and work from home, social networking, e-Learning, entertainment, health and wellness, business including agritech and fin-tech, news and games. There may be several subcategories within each category. The challenge, to be completed in a month, features cash awards and incentives.
Subsequent to this app innovation challenge, government will also launch the second track of the challenge that will seek to identify Indian start-ups/ entrepreneurs/companies and encourage them with ideation, incubation, prototyping and roll out of applications. This track will run for a longer course of a time.
A specific jury for each track with experts from the private sector and academia will evaluate the entries received. Further, the shortlisted apps will be given awards and will also feature on leader boards that can be viewed publicly. As per the government, it will adopt suitable apps and guide them to maturity and list them on the Government e-Marketplace (GeM).
Some of the key evaluation parameters will include ease of use (UI/UX), robustness, security and scalability.
